Books

Roy, A and N. AlSayyad Eds. (2003) Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia – This edited book provides analysis of informal areas within the framework that informal areas are no longer (if ever) the exclusive “domain of the urban poor; rather it is a significant zone of transaction for the middle class and even transnational elites.”

Sims, D. (2010) Understanding Cairo: the Logic of a City Out of Control. Cairo; New York: American University in Cairo Press – This book argues the Cairo is really a type of success story, despite its contradictions and complexities, or perhaps because of them.

Jacobs, J. (1961) The death and life of great American Cities. New York: Vintage Books. – This book represents one of the original attacks on the old system of top-down planning that was the norm in US cities prior to this book’s publication. Ensuing popular demands changed the process of planning to make it more participatory in New York and elsewhere.

UN Habitat (2011) Cairo: A City in Transition. Cairo 2050 is discussed on on pp 152-5.

Academic Articles

Bayat A. Denis. E ( 2000) :Who is Afraid of Ashwaiyyat? Urban change and Politics in Egypt. Environment & Urbanisation. Retrieved from Sage Publications. Retrieved from: http://eau.sagepub.com/content/12/2/185.full.pdf – This paper challenges the orthodox view that rural migrants are causing a rapid expansion of Egyptian cities and have created “cities of peasants”. It describes how most major cities have ceased to be centres for rural in-migration and looks at the spatial diffusion of urban development through the growth of agro-towns, urban villages and new industrial towns

Denis E. (1996). Urban Planning and Growth in Cairo. Middle East Report, (202), 7-12. – This article describes the complexity of urban planning in Cairo through as a result of centralized power and government policy or urban planning decisions (like desert cities).

El Araby, M. (2002). Urban Growth and Environmental Degradation: The Case of Cairo, Egypt. Cities, 19(6), 389-400. – Provides an overview of the growth of the Greater Cairo Metropolitan Region (GCMR) and some of the negative environmental degradation that has occurred due to unplanned, haphazard growth. These problems are not unlike most megacities around the world. The prospects for managing growth in a environmentally and economically sustainable way are not good.**

Fahmi, SW & K Sutton. (2008). Greater Cairo’s Housing Crisis: Contested spaces from inner city areas to new communities. Cities, 25(5), 277-297. – The article discusses the largely economic causes of the housing crises in Greater Cairo and explains why even with a large population and a high demand for housing, there are many vacancies. This article is a good reference for specifics in terms of district make-up and breakdown of types of informal settlements/settlers that may help with field work. It is also a good timeline.

Harvey, David (2008) The Right to the City. New Left Review (53) September-October 2008. – Article about the Right to the City

Marcuse, Peter (2009) From Critical Urban Theory to the Right to the City. City. Volume 13 Nos 2-3 June-September Routledge – Article about the Right to the City

Sabry, S. (2010). How Poverty is Underestimated in Greater Cairo, Egypt. Environment and Urbanization, 22, 523. – The article discussed who the incidence of poverty is underestimated in Greater Cairo, because poverty lines are too low and the census data undercounts people living in informal settlements.

Sutton, K. & W. Fahmi (2001). Cairo’s Urban Growth and Strategic Master Plans in the Light of Egypt’s 1996 Population Census Results, Cities, 18, 3. – This article describes the 1970 and 1983 master plans and reasons for their failure, esp. the inability for the new towns to attract people (rent control, lack of transportation inhibit creation of “downmarket” housing options)

Resilient RulesCulture and Complexity in Traditional Built EnvironmentsAhmad BorhamMay 2016IntroductionThe main idea of this study emerged from an interest in two topics that always seemed in the beginning as parallel: the impact of Islamic law on the urban fabric of the traditional Muslim cities and the application of computer programming in architecture an […]

,While working on a paper on the emerging movements of urban activism and protest against neoliberal urban development strategies in Egypt, I came by a paper titled Contextualizing the Arab Revolts: The Politics behind Three Decades of Neoliberalism in the Arab World by Koenraad Bogaert where he discussing that "neoliberal reform and economic restructur […]

An Inforgraphic by EIPR about Social Housing Project in Egypt during four ruling periodsبالأرقام قصة المليون_وحدة عبر أربع فترات من الحكم مصر الإسكان_الاجتماعي Recently I have been a part of a Wohnungsfrage Academy: The Housing System organized and hosted by the The Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin. During one of the public lectures that follow […]

Alternative Models of University Education in Egypt symposium was a three day panel and networking event that brings together Egyptian models of alternative education with international counterparts in a critical dialogue that aims to unpack the reasons and ramifications of these practices.The symposium was part of Adad program. Adad is a program initiated b […]

By Aya NassarAcademics and theoreticians in both fields of architecture as well as politics might have been in a continuous struggle with whether or not architecture and politics are related, and if so what would this entail (though it has to be said some do this more and/or better than others). What does a political architecture mean? What kind of architect […]